Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/20/2011 - 11:23 China Dick Fuld John Paulson McKinsey Monetization Rating Agencies SWIFT
They say that the simplest analysis is always the most powerful one. That appears to certainly have been the case with our presentation of global banks' Tangible Common Equity ("TCE") ratio to total assets from last Thursday, and specifically our observation of the glaringly obvious, namely that of the 30 most undercapitalized banks in the world, Canadian ones represented a whopping 33% of all. Note: this was not an attack on Canada, this was not some hedge-fund inspired start of a bear-raid on the Canadian banking system, this was nothing but an attempt to warn our readers of, again, what is out there for anyone (who is not blinded by cognitive bias) to see for themselves. Alas, the reaction to that post, particularly in the Canadian media, has been swift and severe, provoking such respected publications as The Globe And Mail to pen not one but two responses, one being the by now so-oft discredited attempt to ignore the message and target the messenger (Who is Zero Hedge, and why should we care?), followed by a more coherent attempt to debunk the claim that a painfully low TCE ratio is never a good thing (Is Zero Hedge looking at the wrong numbers?). The argument of G&M's Boyd Erman boils down to the statement that TCE is not a fair indicator of balance sheet stress and instead one should focus on a "Tier 1" approach of risk estimation, one that includes Risk Weighted Assets. Here we could provide the reference to Lehman's Tier 1 ratio, which was well in the double digits on the day when it filed for bankruptcy, even as the bank's true leverage was about 40x, a number which eventually brought on the biggest bankruptcy in history. We could but we won't, instead we will ask, rhetorically, who is John Paulson, and why should the Globe and Mail care?
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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/who-john-paulson-and-why-should-globe-and-mail-care
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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